Let Democrats Call Trump's Immigration Bluff on DACA

In his State of the Union presentation tomorrow, President Donald Trump is expected to promote his new proposal for US$25 billion for a wall along the Mexican border and for a path to citizenship for almost two million young people taken to the USA illegally as children. He did offer to legalize all the Dreamers that Democrats had sought.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, has said the proposal is part of 's plan to "make America white again", and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, said was using the Dreamers as a tool to fulfill a wish list for immigration hard-liners. That is, to meaningfully increase support in favor of a DREAM Act among progressive voters, a diverse, broad-based leadership effort from the Democratic Party has to emerge. There are almost a million people under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

That outrage deepened after Schumer spoke with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow that Tuesday evening. In 2013, an immigration reform bill passed the Senate with strong bipartisan support, then got buried in the House without even a vote.

What's inescapable about the sudden anxiety about reducing legal immigration is that the two policies the Trump administration and its hard-line supporters are targeting are now responsible for bringing in large numbers of non-white people to the United States - not the Norwegians the president wants. Let's call it the "Awful Pictures Strategy". It means something to be a USA citizen, and it should be worked toward.

Durbin talked about why he thinks this is a practical issue to pursue right now.

Many federal employees deemed nonessential are furloughed, meaning they can't come to work. They represent no economic or security threat to our nation - in fact, they benefit us all in both ways and more.Unfortunately, they are now at risk because last September, Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded DACA, their only legal protection.

We're less than 30 hours away from Donald Trump's first State of the Union address, which will be the most elegant, best, yuuuuge SOTU in history, of course. And I think that says a lot. However, their happiness didn't last long, as Democrats quickly agreed to a new continuing resolution to reopen the government Monday without a DACA resolution. While most Americans oppose the wall - and wasting taxpayer dollars on it - the project still remains highly popular with Republicans, making it a hard policy for Congressional Republicans to publicly oppose as they head into a nasty midterm election.

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It's important for fans and players that the relationship between the two parties is restored at least short-term. The relationship between Antonio Conte and the Chelsea hierarchy is fragile to say the least.

I don't doubt the Dreamers' plight is about justice.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell did promise to bring a DACA fix to the floor of the Senate for a vote before the new continuing resolution expires February 8, but that's not much of a win. Immigration was one of the core issues that fueled Trump's ascendancy, and racial and identity politics isn't something Democrats should assume they'll win on in November. He seemed to be saying: "Go ahead and start deporting all those deserving young people, Mr. President".

Splice all three realities into one feature-length picture and you can see the Democrats' challenge. "It's not going to be pretty".

The Trump administration has had a fraught relationship at times with countries to its south, and the President often used Mexico as a target during his campaign, even pledging that the country would pay for his border wall.

Though it was a bold move to initiate such a shutdown with their filibuster in the senate, they did not follow through with their actions afterwards. Immigrants' rights activists mobilized immediately, advocating for the attachment of protective measures for DACA recipients to other bills.

While some administration proposals are good, $200 billion in federal funds "barely gets you out of the starting gate" in addressing deficient bridges and other US needs, said Ed Rendell, the former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania who co-founded Building America's Future, a bipartisan coalition of officials that promotes infrastructure spending. That's a good outcome for Dreamers.